


Silverstreak

by rakketyrivertam



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Child Death, Family, Fantasy Racism, Gen, Genocide, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reunions, War, a character believes rape happened and says so, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:05:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21625888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rakketyrivertam/pseuds/rakketyrivertam
Summary: Before the Fall of Praxus, Thundercracker had a mate and two creations.
Relationships: Bluestreak & Thundercracker, Jazz/Prowl, Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	Silverstreak

**Author's Note:**

> The Voxillum are my own invention, primarily inspired by someone else's fic with a half-Seeker Rodimus and by the Métis and Rroma people in real life, then fleshed out with details pulled from pretty much every other time, place, and culture. For Voxillii (the Voxillum dialect of Cybertronian), I've bastardized Sorani Kurdish as a placeholder. Hover translations are enabled on desktop.
> 
> I do not take "constructive" criticism. No criticism is constructive once a work is finished and posted. If you enjoyed the fic, though, I do love to hear it so please feel free to comment!
> 
> **Things to know:**  
Numbers are in hexadecimal/base-16 because robots  
<del>Sx</del> is Shanix (Cybertronian currency)  
Sa is the diminutive of Sire and the Cybertronian equivalent of Dad  
Ri is the diminutive of Carrier and the Cybertronian equivalent of Mom  
Sol - local solar cycle  
Cycle - Cybertronian solar cycle, just over a day  
Decacycle - ten Cybertronian solar cycles, approximately two weeks  
Joor - Cybertronian time-measurement equivalent to about an hour  
Breem - Cybertronian time-measurement equivalent to about a minute  
Orn - Cybertronian time-measurement equivalent to about a year  
Vorn - Cybertronian stellar cycle, approximately 83 years, abbreviated V  
There is heavily formatted text in the files Thundercracker accesses halfway through the fic, some people may have trouble reading this
> 
> If I forgot anything here or anything you need to be tagged, let me know. And now..., onto the fic!
> 
> * * *

In the grand scheme of things, Thundercracker remembered very little – and yet far too much.

He woke that morning surrounded by his clan, as always, seven generations spread across the floor, wings, door-wings, and various limbs splayed over pillows and padding and kin. Nearest to him were his mate, Rockburst, and their two creations.

This he remembered perfectly, only because it was just like any other morning.

He also remembered hearing the roar of a thousand flight engines closing in fast and the low whistles of things falling from a great height at great speed.

He remembered light, pain, darkness.

Rockburst’s greying corpse had been trapped there beneath him. Their sparklings, still alive, had been flung away by his careless, protective dive. He could hear them but not call out to them, and he tried and failed to reassure them through the flickering carrier bond. He couldn’t tell if he was dying or they were, and he rushed to tamp down the terror that thought came with.

Autobot rescue workers found them two cycles later. Silver and Glide had fallen silent after the first.

“My sparklings,” was the first thing Thundercracker said.

“We’re not falling for that, Seeker,” was the first thing the Autobots said.

The next thing he knew, he was hanging from the ceiling by his wrists, facing down the Stanii torturer that would later become the Autobot head of Special Operations and feeling Aureglide slowly languish away from hunger and disease.

He begged, he pleaded, he made things up.

His bond with Aureglide faded.

His bond with Silver broke, the spark of another mech hovering on the other side as it happened.

He roared and thrashed and writhed in his chains, knowing that meant one of exactly two things.

He continued to beg. He continued to plead. He stopped making things up.

They let him go eventually.

He asked to see the bodies of his sparklings. They refused.

“You don’t deserve sparklings, Decepticon scum.”

The very first thing he did once he was healed enough to fly again was travel to Tarn and enlist.

* * *

He caught Skywarp’s eye first. Then, broken and grieving, he fell into his berth.

No one was more surprised than he when he received an official proposal of courtship from the Winglord himself. He turned it down the first time, too deep in his grief to consider rebuilding what he had with Rockburst with a Seeker trine.

Three vorn later, he turned down a second proposal, reasoning that he didn’t know the two Seekers well enough.

Skywarp told him exactly what he thought of that, but Thundercracker stood firm.

So, they sought him out, as friends.

A further ten vorn of refueling together once every cycle, of stolen moments between missions, of comfort and comforting, and they asked again.

He was Voxillum, he explained, not full Seeker. There hadn’t been a full Seeker – or a full Praxian – in his bloodline since the Thirteen walked Cybertron’s surface. He was from Praxus, though. He had one dead mate and two dead sparklings. He wanted to be with them, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t belong in their world of stiff manners and casual deceptions, filtered through a thick veneer of backhanded compliments and double meanings and surrounded on all sides by crystal and chrome. He belonged to a family too large to fit in a single room and too loud to think, festivals of light and color and dancing, where the greatest insult was to refuse second helpings and the greatest gift to press so close to your loved ones you couldn’t tell whose plating belonged to whom and then simply sit in silence.

“So?” Starscream asked. “If that’s the life you want, we’ll give it to you.” He snorted and tossed his head imperiously. “Skywarp’s cousins should fit the first category just fine.”

It was very much Starscream in delivery but the feeling was there if one knew where to look, and though he would never admit it, Thundercracker fell in love then.

They were trine-bonded within the orn, and though it wasn’t the same as sleeping in a pile of many generations, he slept better than he had since the Fall with a lover pressed close on either side of him.

* * *

The Autobot sniper blindsided him on Earth. He hit him straight through the shoulder, into the wing, and so he dived, intent on revenge, only to pull back up at the last second.

He purged his tanks that night, actively blocking his bond as his mates worried and fretted over his head. His nightmares were haunted by silver door-wings and pure, indigo optics set on either side of Rockburst’s strong, thin nose.

He woke up screaming the name of his mate and children and there was no hiding after that.

“You have two options,” Starscream said as Skywarp comforted. “You can avoid him on the battlefield and avoid his hate and his aim. Or you can seek him out, protect him, try to trigger his memory and revive his bond to you.”

Thundercracker’s vents stuttered.

Starscream gently stroked his helm. “Think on it. Whatever you decide, the three of us will do.”

The next battle saw far too much friendly fire on the Decepticon’s side as the three Seekers danced around the sniper. Afterward, Starscream and Skywarp looked too haggard even for one of Megatron’s oft-given beatings. Thundercracker had fewer holes in his wings, but far more holes in his spark.

The Autobots called him Bluestreak, and now that he had a designation, it was easy to gain a file from Soundwave.

**DESIGNATION: BLUESTREAK  
FACTION: AUTOBOTS  
LOCATION OF EMERGENCE:** Praxus  
**CITIZENSHIP:** Praxian  
**CARRIER:** Rockburst of Praxus [DECEASED]  
**SIRE:** [UNKNOWN] of Praxus [DECEASED]  
**ADDITIONAL CREATORS:** Not Applicable  
**AGE:** 11V [EXCLUDING STASIS]/BC51V [INCLUDING STASIS]  
**RANK:** Ensign  
**SPECIALTY:** Sniper, long-distance  
**ADDITIONAL:**  
1\. Last survivor, Fall of Praxus  
2\. Post-traumatic stress  
3\. Claustrophobia  
4\. Nightmares easily hacked, replicated  
5\. Sensitive sensor suite  
6\. Effectively blind without door-wings  
7\. Adopted creators Prowl of Praxus, Meister of Staniz aka Jazz of Polyhex  
**HIGH-VALUE TARGET**  
**BOUNTY:** F000000 <strike>Sx</strike> or FF ration credits

Thundercracker could do nothing other than stare in shock as his processor threw together a file of hasty corrections and additions.

**DESIGNATION: SILVERSTREAK**  
**FACTION:** Not Applicable  
**LOCATION OF EMERGENCE:** Voxillum Settlement Bravo  
**CITIZENSHIP:** Not Applicable  
**CARRIER:** Voxillum Thundercracker [DECEPTICON]  
**SIRE:** Voxillum Rockburst [DECEASED]  
**ADDITIONAL CREATORS:** Not Applicable  
**AGE:** 10V [EXCLUDING STASIS]/BC50V [INCLUDING STASIS]  
**ADDITIONAL:**  
1\. Laughs when tickled  
2\. Fascinated by cyberwasp apiaries and crystal gardens  
3\. Requires a song before recharge  
4\. Prefers iron to aluminum  
5\. Praxian frame  
6\. **[MEMORY FILE]/VIDEO:** “Can you say it? Can you say ‘Sa’?” _“Ri.”_ “No, I’m not Ri. That’s Ri. Can you say ‘Sa’?” _“Ri!”_ [LAUGHTER]  
7\. **[MEMORY FILE]/VIDEO:** _"Ri, look!"_ “That looks good. What is it?” _“Um… a city.”_ “That’s a very big city. How many blocks did you use?” _“I don’t know.”_ “What are you going to do when it’s all done?” _“Make it fall down!”_  
8\. **[MEMORY FILE]/AUDIO:** _“Sa! Ri! Ri! Where are you? Glide! Glide! Help! Please! Hurts! Ri!”_  
**[ERROR]  
[MEMORY CORE OVERHEATING]  
[EMOTIONAL CENTER OVERHEATING]  
[DISCONNECT NOW]  
[ERROR]  
[ERROR]  
[ERROR]  
[…]**

Skywarp and Starscream hovered over him as he rebooted. He told them what he had found through tears and between sobs.

The next battle, Skywarp teleported to Bluestreak’s side, holding up his arms in surrender as Thundercracker monitored from the air and over the bond. “You’re Rockburst’s creation?”

“How do you-?”

“Just thought you should know a good chunk of your file is wrong. I mean, for one, Rockburst lived in Praxus and had a Praxian frame, but he wasn’t Praxian. That might come up later.”

“What-?”

“And for another, if you really are his, then your name’s not Bluestreak. Wrong color. Bye!” Skywarp waved cheekily and teleported away.

Thundercracker tried not to resent his trine mate for toying with his creation. Even if the method had not been discussed, it would be effective at getting the results that had.

He wanted his sparkling back.

He wanted to hold him in his arms again, before the war took one or the both of them for real.

* * *

It was Soundwave who approached first, with several joor of recordings from Ark surveillance.

They watched as Bluestreak grew more and more distressed as Teletraan-I’s archives pulled up more and more evidence to support Skywarp’s claim.

They watched as he realized Rockburst had never carried, nor had he ever been bonded in a way Cybertronian law would recognize.

They watched as he found his true name, as he pulled up his own birth records, and as his plating flared in shock and anger the precise moment that he noted the designation of his carrier.

They watched as he rushed to his adopted creators for comfort but refused to tell them what hurt.

Thundercracker reached out across his side of the broken bond as he saw Bluestreak turn inward to do the same. His engines grumbled near-sonic as the Prime’s Praxian first officer twitched in his sleep and Bluestreak recoiled. His spark flared unexpectedly, distractedly.

Starscream turned his attention back to the screen, where Bluestreak was sneaking out from between his recharging creators and out of the Ark. The footage changed, then, to the inside of the Nemesis, and to Bluestreak attempting to sneak through it.

Thundercracker snarled and rounded on Soundwave.

The mech stared at him, unimpressed. At his silent signal, the doors opened, and Rumble and Frenzy dragged a bound and gagged Bluestreak into the trine’s quarters.

“You have 1E breem,” Soundwave said before he and his cohort disappeared back into the bowels of the ship’s computers.

Immediately, Thundercracker knelt and freed his creation.

“Is it true?” Bluestreak asked, pulling the gag out of his mouth.

Thundercracker nodded. “It’s true.”

“Why? Why did you leave me?”

Thundercracker shook his head, wings shaking with the weight of memory and emotion. “I was taken from you. Taken and tortured by the one you call sire for the crime of my frame. I felt your sister die. When I felt our bond break, I didn’t know the Autobots had replaced it with a bond to one of their own. I thought-ˮ Thundercracker shuttered his optics and swayed, spark seizing in its crystal as he remembered. “I thought they had raped you to death. My youngest creation… my brightest spark…. When they finally decided I had no useful information about the Decepticons, they let me go. I asked to see your bodies and they refused.”

Bluestreak carefully, cautiously reached out a hand to his carrier’s now trembling frame. He rested it on his cheek and then reset his vocalizer. “How did my sister die?”

Thundercracker shook his head, staring at the floor. “I don’t know. She was hungry, sick, and in pain. She had a frame like mine. It’s likely her wounds were left unattended.”

Bluestreak’s door-wings flared in shock. “The Autobots would never do that!”

Starscream snorted. “Not under your current Prime, perhaps.”

Bluestreak stared in horror.

“You would not remember Sentinel Prime’s rule,” Thundercracker said softly, “but he was always cruel to us. He called us thieves, vagabonds, and child-stealers – nomads and permanently settled alike. Are you aware the only claim you have to Cybertronian citizenship is through your abductors? And my only claim is through my trine?”

A protest rose in Bluestreak’s processor at the thought of Prowl and Jazz as his abductors, no matter how well the word fit.

Thundercracker crooned soothingly and waited for his creation to compost himself before he spoke next. “I know you love them. They have not harmed you since they took you, and I owe them some small measure of gratitude for that. But I owe them far, far more hate for things done to me and my loved ones before and after I entered this war. I will not ask you to stop loving them, but please… do not ask me to stop hating them.”

Bluestreak nodded. “That’s – that’s fair.”

Thundercracker reached up and cupped the hand that remained on his face. “As far as I know, we are the last Voxillum. If nothing else, please let me teach you the culture you emerged into. Even if –ˮ he reset his vocalizer “- Even if you never remember me, or never come to view me even as a mentor – let alone a creator – please let me fulfill this one duty to you, ruhekem.” His wings clattered against his armor as they vibrated with conflicting hope and apprehension.

Bluestreak stared for a long time, searching for something. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it when he found it. “Yes.”

* * *

Sols of secret meetings passed. Cycles and decacycles of teaching, of hoping something would trigger long-buried memories, of neatly avoiding or subtly defending each other on the battlefield.

And, yet, it was Thundercracker’s cry of “Kori kaba!” when he stubbed his thruster on a tree stump that prompted the first reaction beyond vague familiarity.

Bluestreak looked up, wide-eyed, and said “Sa didn’t like it when you cursed.”

Other memories were quick to follow after that.

“You used to sing that to me.”

“We danced this at Grandsire’s emergence anniversary.”

“Aureglide almost fell off the balcony when you told that joke.”

“Sa gave us goodies the first time we managed to do this right, even though you said no.”

“This blanket was mine? Didn’t it use to be blue? It was blue, so that was what I called it. And when they asked me my name, I asked for it and then said ‘Streak’, because that was what mam called me. You hated it when he called me that.”

Finally, Bluestreak bowed his head, doorwings trembling, as he strung together the words he needed one by one.

“You were in so much pain. You tried to protect us from it and comfort us, but you couldn’t do both at once. They told me you were dead, that the pain was ghost sensations, that the only way to stop it was to bond to a new creator. I didn’t want a new creator. I just wanted the pain to stop. But then they brought someone in who looked like sa….”

Thundercracker wrapped his arms around his creation.

Silverstreak looked up. “Come with me,” he said. “I can’t go with you, they’ll kill us both. Please come with me, I don’t want you to go.”

Thundercracker swallowed and pulled away. “The Autobots will imprison me for life.”

“We could go somewhere else. Find a neutral territory.”

“And leave your friends and my trine behind? Where would we go that they would not look for us? Where the war would not find us?”

Silverstreak wept.

Thundercracker tried to stay strong, but when he reached out to comfort, his field betrayed his sorrow.

He stayed as long as he dared.

When he returned, he went straight to his trine leader. “What’s the plan?” he asked.

Starscream frowned in confusion.

Thundercracker shook his head before he could voice it. “You’re the one with the plans to depose of Megatron, and you know there will never be peace while he leads. I need there to be peace. So what’s the plan?”

Starscream grinned.

* * *

The next battle, Megatron ordered Thundercracker to use his sonic weapon, and so he did. The warlord went flying, and Silverstreak – his brightest spark – took the opportunity presented to him. Megatron’s frame was grey before it hit the ground.

Thundercracker launched toward the Autobot forces, landing squarely in front of their second and third in command, optics hard and unforgiving. “I hate you,” he said simply. He gestured at Prowl and then Jazz in turn. “I hate _you_ for taking my creation from me, and I hate _you_ for torturing me for cycles just for having a Seeker frame and living in Praxus, and I hate you both for letting my other creation die. I would kill you both where you stand if it wouldn't devastate my brightest spark. So for Silverstreak – Bluestreak’s sake, let’s have peace.”

Prowl stared up at him in confusion, then understanding. “Alright,” he said, “let’s have peace.”

Silverstreak came running out of the crowd and latched onto his carrier, holding tight.

Thundercracker embraced him. He did not let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations for mobile:
> 
> **Ruhekem** \- from _rəhækæm_ \- "my soul" - endearment from a mother to a child
> 
> **Kori kaba** \- from _kori qahba_ \- "son of a whore"
> 
> **Mam** \- from _mãm_ \- "uncle"


End file.
